The Feasts of Fantasy: Who Ate Better, the Hunger Games Tributes or the Harry Potter Wizards?

Food can become the focal point of conversations and interactions in any setting from a Thanksgiving dinner to an awkward blind date. But it’s not only the actual act of eating that brings people together—we ogle it, too. Even if we can’t eat it. (This is also known as the precept behind the Food Network.) Having savored the elaborately detailed food scenes in the Hunger Games trilogy, we were looking forward to seeing them brought to life in director Gary Ross’s movie version. During their final days leading up to the Hunger Games in the book and movie, tributes are treated to lavish feasts unlike anything the often-starving adolescents have ever known. From soups, to lamb chops, to chocolate cakes, the contestants are literally stuffed to the bursting point in preparation for the hardship they are about to endure. But how do these series of last suppers compare to, say, the Christmas Feast of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, with its magically appearing platters and flaming puddings? Below, a gastronomic analysis of who did it better.

Eating Aboard the Trains

“The supper comes in courses. A thick carrot soup, green salad, lamb chops and mashed potatoes, cheese and fruit, a chocolate cake. Throughout the meal, Effie Trinket keeps reminding us to save space because there’s more to come. But I’m stuffing myself because I’ve never had food like this, so good and so much, and because probably the best thing I can do between now and the Games is put on a few pounds.”

En route to the Capitol on board a high-speed train, poverty-stricken Katniss and Peeta are presented with the most food they have ever seen in one place, and they tuck in with abandon. (One of the many great things about Katniss is that she is the rare teenage heroine who is concerned with gaining rather than losing weight.) The film replaced the lamb chops with a prominent rack of lamb crowning the overflowing table—perhaps to evoke the meat and bones the tributes will soon become in the arena. Delicacies of every sort spill across the table, creating a visual feast, even though some of the elaborate treats aren’t readily identifiable (this is the food of the future, after all).

Being children of the first rather than the third world, the characters in Harry Potter view food entirely differently. The food itself is not a luxury, so it is made luxurious—and magical. Aboard the Hogwarts Express that the students take to school annually, a chocolate frog jumps out of the palm of Harry’s hand and straight onto the window of the train. It is a perfect example of the delightful difference between mundane Muggle life and magical Wizard life, and no child left that movie theater without wishing for a chance to visit that dining cart. Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans were also introduced in this scene, giving delighted children the chance to take a Russian roulette-style gamble on what flavor they might get (earwax, perchance?).

Who wins? If we’ve learned one thing from these scenes, it’s that from Chocolate Frogs and Every Flavor Beans to lamb chops and mashed potatoes, trains are pretty much where it’s at when it comes to meals on the go in fantasy novels. The Hunger Games comes out on top, though, for nutritional value and serving more rib-sticking fare than just sweets. Tributes are in it to win it, and that means getting their protein on (and keeping teeth cavity-free).

Feasting in the Dining Halls

The gladiatorial aspect of the fighting in Hunger Games is echoed in its feasting scenes: just as the Romans were known to do, Capitol citizens engage in grotesque consumption until they make themselves sick, so that they may resume eating all over again. Katniss describes these occasions in great detail, awestruck by the quality and quantity of food made suddenly available to her:

“Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey.”

The train delivers Katniss, Peeta, and their Capitol escorts to a modern boutique hotel, where their Las Vegas-style suite is filled with goodies. In the film, neon Jell-o sculptures replaced the honey-colored pudding—all the better to suit the “brightness and outrageous colors” costume designer Judianna Makovsky used to emphasize the cutting-edge “meanness” of the Capitol.

The characters in Harry Potter, by contrast, are far better fed—with the exception of Harry, whose Dursley-household years meant deprivation of both the nutritional and emotional sort. Their daily fare, cooked by house elves and consumed in Hogwarts’ spectacular Great Hall, is luxurious by any standard, but has the added benefit of being accompanied by magic. At the wave of the headmaster’s hand, mint humbugs, apple pies and chocolate éclairs tantalize students by appearing magically on the table. The décor of the Hall, with its floating candles and sky ceiling, adds to the spectacular show.

Who wins? This time, we have to go with Harry Potter. The Capitol-supplied feasts in The Hunger Games are just too sinister of purpose to be truly delightful, and the movie version cut out Katniss’s loudly voiced relish at the feasts in the book. Instead, the tributes faced with heaping platters and steaming plates often lose their appetites—and who wouldn’t, with a battle royale just days away? For the kids in Harry Potter, a feast is just that: a feast. A Hogwarts student tucking into these magical delights has no other cares in the world.

Times of Famine

Once the Hunger Games tributes’ allotted time to fatten up is over, they enter the arena where food is scarce, although Katniss is well practiced at scavenging. In the book, Katniss and her surrogate little sister, tribute Rue, join forces to put together a paltry meal:

“Rue contributes a big handful of some sort of starchy root to the meal. Roasted over the fire, they have the sharp sweet taste of a parsnip. She recognizes the bird, too, some wild thing they call a groosling in her district. She says sometimes a flock will wander into the orchard and they get a decent lunch that day. For a while, all conversation stops as we fill our stomachs. The groosling has delicious meal that’s so fatty, the grease drips down your face when you bite into it.”

In the film, however, Rue doesn’t contribute much besides her smile and wide-eyed, bashful-yet-wise-beyond-her-years outlook. The groosling they share is a meager rodent-y thing, roasted over a spit. It has barely enough meat to even appear edible, let alone dripping with some much-needed fat for the starving duo.

Surprisingly, there are also moments of culinary hardship in Harry Potter. When Harry, Ron, and Hermione are forced to scrounge in the forest for food in Book Seven, it comes as rather a rude shock:

“This was their first encounter with the fact that a full stomach meant good spirits; an empty one, bickering and gloom. Harry was least surprised by this, because he had suffered periods of near starvation at the Dursleys’. Hermione bore up reasonably well on those nights when they managed to scavenge nothing but berries or stale biscuits, her temper perhaps a little shorter than usual and her silences rather dour. Ron, however, had always been used to three delicious meals a day, courtesy of his mother or of the Hogwarts house-elves, and hunger made him both unreasonable and irascible.”

Still, unlike the hunger-stricken citizens of the Hunger Games’ districts, this period is short-lived for Harry and his friends. Mama Weasley’s home cooking is definitely to blame (or praise) for Ron’s unquestionably stocky figure by the final film, one which would serve him well were he to cross genres from fantasy to sci-fi.

Who wins? Definitely Hunger Games, although it’s not a fair contest. Having been deprived all their lives, most of the Districts’ tributes are enterprising and resourceful. Also, since when are stale biscuits something one can “scavenge” in a forest? Minus points for Harry Potter. And, Hermione, come on: who packs a magic mansion of a tent and forgets to stock the kitchen?